Karpathy (March 23): Humans Are Now the Bottleneck in AI Research — Autoresearch Ran 700 Experiments, Found 11% Speedup

WinBuzzer·high signal

In a March 23 analysis extending his autoresearch framework, Karpathy argues that human researchers are now the rate-limiting constraint in any AI domain with a clear scalar metric. His autonomous agent ran 700 experiments over two days, found 20 optimizations, and delivered an 11% training speedup — results he had missed after months of manual tuning. Key quote: 'To get the most out of the tools that have become available now, you have to remove yourself as the bottleneck. You can't be there to prompt the next thing.'